Obtaining high-tier loot from NPCs

Unturned II U4 Discussion
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It’s been a while since I’ve done a fairly long suggestion post for Unturned II like this, I want to talk about a few ideas I’ve had about ways to obtain higher-tier loot other than manually looting from spawns.

In 3.0 we have horde beacons and airdrops as the main ways to obtain high-tier items in the vanilla game. I think with the arrival of “bandit” NPCs and moving NPCs, the ways of obtaining the high-tier items should be focused on those instead, rather than having horde beacons, which are just a bit… strange.

Camps/Trading

Basically, if NPCs are going to set up camps in the forest, perhaps the good loot shouldn’t actually be in the camps, or on the NPCs themselves. Then you could, if you were skilled and had a good enough gun, kill them pretty easily and get a bunch of (presumably) decent guns right off the bat.

I think instead, NPCs should carry on themselves guns that could be used to shoot at you if you were unfriendly with them (however that would work, I’m not focusing on here - read the countless other suggestion posts about it).

If you killed the NPC he would drop his gun and whatever clothes they had on them (clothes would be pretty low-tier early game stuff). The actual gun would be in very low condition, prone to jamming, impractical to use on its own when you can just find better guns in better condition as loot spawns.

So by killing NPCs at their camp you risk a battle with a large group of armed NPCs, for not much reward. This could promote friendly trading with NPCs (perhaps they sell you better gun in much better condition, full mag etc) and your reputation with them wouldn’t go down.

Armed Convoys

I made a suggestion similar to this a while ago, but I’d like to clarify/go over in further detail about it in this thread.

If NPCs have several camps (perhaps there could be a minimum limit on how many camps were generated, if you chose to have them on at all) then at certain times there would be armed convoys of several vehicles, transporting the high-tier loot with them.

I suppose there could be a notification on the interface when one of these events were occuring.

Basically, a convoy would consist of 1-2 unarmed trucks (containing the loot inside - in crates on the back of the truck and inside the internal storage) and escort vehicles (light vehicles with mounted machine guns, or even motorcycles with mounted guns on the sidecar :sunglasses:)

Looting a convoy would require you to be geared to be able to stop it, this would be a very end-game thing similar to horde beacons in 3.0.

To stop the convoy, you’d either need a good vehicle (or several) to chase them down and manually shoot the defenders one by one, or you could go to the end of the convoy route and set up improvised explosive traps on the road.

These would be like landmines in the previous games, but maybe a bit harder to craft for balance purposes. You’d need a bunch of gear and upgraded skills to be able to make the landmines, but it would make taking down the convoy much easier with no chance of being shot at.

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I can see in order to get higher tier equipment from NPCs either a trading/bartering skill or reputation effecting shops unlocking new tiers to buy and decreasing prices.

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Bandits should (and probably will) be a totally different from friendly NPCs. I think it would be best if they were always aggressive and had good loot on them. Not good enough to raid bases or kill geared people but just mid-tier weapons, ammo, armor and consumables. Of course there could be different difficulties of bandits with different tiers of gear, but then it should also be made near impossible for them to be killed with melee weapons, bad weapons or bad ammo. Otherwise getting good loot from them would be too easy. Look at EFT’s raiders, for example. They move carefully in packs and kill any player on sight very quickly if the player doesn’t have good enough armor to stop their bullets.

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But killing one guy would get you mid-tier stuff. I think the weapons should be very degraded if you actually try and use them, low durability and high chance of jamming and breaking, so you have to repair the guns before they’re actually practical to use. I think they should only have on them clothes with low storage capacity and mid-tier guns in poor condition. I don’t think any kind of consumables, armour or ammo should be on them, then you’d get usable, decent stuff by killing one NPC and not having to loot for it. That would just be too easy and basically remove much of a key gameplay element.

I don’t think the game should be focused too much on combat with bandit NPCs. That would just be a pain in the ass. I think they should be more secondary in gameplay compared to fighting zombies, not being able to shoot you from a long distance.

If there are two kinds of NPC, maybe the bandits would operate the convoys between their camps which contain the loot, and friendly NPCs are the ones that sell the good gear which you need to trade/barter for. Otherwise you could just obtain decent usable weapons from them.

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I agree that the bandits shouldn’t be too big of a loot source. They shouldn’t be too common but just a random encounter about once in an hour or two of normal gameplay.

What I meant with the loot stuff was that they have a little amount of loot but that is mostly low-tier. It shouldn’t be items found in military locations.

For example, a bandit could have basic clothing like jeans and a hoodie, one low-tier armor piece like a civilian vest from 3.0, a low-tier gun like a pistol or shotgun and some extra ammo for it. In addition to this, they could have something like 0-2 food/drink/healing items. Rarely they might have mid-tier replacements for some of these items.

The durability of the items could vary a lot and I think it shouldn’t always be so low. That would make the items mostly useless and killing the bandits would be a worse option than just running away.

That’s the point I was making. You should be able to get usable stuff by killing the bandits. They would be rare enough that you wouldn’t be hunting for bandits instead of the normal looting. Also, they wouldn’t be too easy to kill if they spawned and moved in packs of 2-3 and had decent AI. This would be a different thing from normal looting and wouldn’t replace or remove the current way of looting in any way.

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But I think killing the bandits should be a worse option than running away. That would make other ways to get guns/items more worthwhile, like I suggested.

I’m pretty sure guns are going to be rarer and harder to maintain in general. So what’s basically a walking free gun would kind of go against that. At least if they do have guns, they should be guaranteed to be in bad condition and you’d need to repair and maintain them a lot to restore them to working function.

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Well, of course they will be adjusted to be not-too-overpowered, but I’d like to see them as both a threat and a worthwhile source of items for players who already have decent gear.

You would also have to have a gun to be able to kill them and as I’ve said multiple times, they would be hard to kill. So your claim that they would be “walking free guns” doesn’t really work there.

Also, if you want them to be so not-worthwhile, why would you even want them to be added into the game? If the bandits were made like you described, they would just be a waste of time for Nelson and an annoyance for players because you don’t gain anything from them.

When you add something like bandits into the game, you want players who have played the game for more than 10 hours to react like: “Ooh another group of bandits!” Instead of: “Why are these so annoying?” *cough cough* wandering trader *cough*

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But as I have said multiple times, this would be to balance it out. I believe guns in good condition should be harder to come by, and guns overall should be rarer, harder to keep and maintain, harder to repair, able to jam and fully break.

I think instead of different guns being necessarily “good” or “rare” or whatever like they are in 3.0 and before, the best guns would be those that were repaired and upgraded, in good condition, etc.

So when you got the best guns in events such as buying them from NPC vendors or events the convoys that I described (something equivalent to horde beacon) they would be pre-upgraded and in best condition.

I agree with you that bandits should have more “mid-tier” guns, they should just be in need of repair, upgrade and refurbishment.

I think that guns should be able to be broken down into their constituent parts as well, to be used to upgrade and repair other guns.

So the items on bandits shouldn’t be worthless, just not too exciting stuff. Guns should be kept and maintained, if you encounter a group of NPCs in the forest and killed them, they would provide weapons that could be kept and refurbished if you had the materials to do that, or could be used to repair your gun you have on you and keep it in working order.

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I very much agree that guns shouldn’t be good and/or have a high damage only because they’re rare. You should have to repair them to keep them in good condition and upgrade them with attachments to make them easier to handle. Also the damage should depend only on the guns’ actual muzzle velocity and bullet type. This would still make low caliber guns less powerful than high caliber but low caliber guns could shoot more damaging bullets than high caliber. (power=armor penetration, damage=health damage)

Also I didn’t think of the fact that you can take parts or attachments from the guns. That’s cool. All the guns could have randomly selected attachments. (if any) So that’s another thing you could get from them.

But in the end it just comes down to balance changes how the bandits will fit in the game. They will not be perfect in the first patch that includes them. Or the second. They will get balanced over time as players give feedback about their state and when Nelson himself feels like it. Everything is still very in-progress relating the game, so we shouldn’t get stuck on the details of what kinds of items the bandits will have on them.

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Ngl ya got some sweet ideas

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I like the ideas being thrown around here. I love the idea of a convoy for some end game AI battles. For example if we where to create this scenario on a map like Washington purely for example, the tunnels with debris could be open (still end of the map) and the convoy could enter from one part of the tunnel and travel to another across the map. Allowing for players to attack it and try to destroy or steal the vehicles and loot.

I agree bandits shouldn’t be something we are actively hunting for to exploit for loot, but more encounters. I think tho it would be more common to find level 1 bandit groups roaming with perhaps some guys with bats and maybe some pistols. Level 2 could have some bows, pistols, shotguns. And level three could have the chance of one having an assault rifle and some military vests. I think with better loot should come more numbers and increased difficultly to avoid free walking loot.

I like the idea as well as groups spawning in with encampments and these could reward more loot but be more difficult than running into them on the street. I don’t think tho we should be afraid of bandits being a decent way to get loot, because I would love to see some high end military bandits with vests and assault rifles. I think those rare more loot worthy bandits should be rare to avoid an overabundance of end game loot.

Also just to throw out an idea maybe from bandits or bandit camps we could get radios or signal beacons to have the ability to call in things like support copters or convoys. The bandits thinking its a friendly calls come and gives you the chance to attack them for gear. I know the excursion idea for zombies teased a system like this a little. Being that certain mobs drop activation items like keys so you can activate an excursion. This makes excursions an event and something you can’t just do but need a consumable item to activate. I have always liked this feature from rust as well, the ability to loot items that reward more loot like key cards and smoke signals, spices up looting.

I like the idea of consumables like food and water being loot from bandit camps as well. I don’t think they should have raid loot but most guns can kill geared players. I would love to some and bandits with SMG’s and AR’s. I think there should be a progression system with them that allow for early game players to jump bandits for early game loot. Early game players would probably have to avoid for example level 3 bandit groups because of there firepower and numbers.

I am excited like most for Unturned 2’s shift to a more survival based game. As much as I don’t want people waltzing into military base naked and getting a full auto working gun right off the bat, I don’t want a game where guns are so rare and have high maintenance. I think people should have a progression to end game with having to battle AI, environment, and hunger on there way to end game. And maybe we are on the same page and I am misreading peoples opinions on guns and there presence in U2, but it seems people want a radical shift away from 3.0’s pvp scene and want to balance with super rare guns and maintenance. I think personally guns should be a little more rare and yes need to be repaired more often then not when found. I think guns without mags and different ammo calibers will change the hyper loot progression of 3.0 different. BUT I think we can’t balance the use of guns around there maintenance, when a gun is fixed and clean it should work and be functional for a while. I think if anything we need to stray away from the durability level we see on guns in 3.0. If I shoot a hundred round drum my gun is below 40% or less. AR’s should be able to fire at least 500 rounds to go from 100% to 0%. Bolt actions should go through 150 shots from 100-0. I don’t like the idea that a gun that is rare and does high damage is so easy to break, to somehow balance it or stop a player from using it. Something I really hate is the durability on muzzles and silencers, I don’t bother with them cause I don’t want to micro manage them. Things like this make existing or just using a gun feel like a chore.

I like the idea of cleaning guns and the idea of finding dirty ones. But guns should not be made of paper like in 3.0.

Overall tho I really like the ideas in this post.

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